This Week

Alison Biggar

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, December 3, 2006

As with most yearlong projects the Chronicle's Food and Wine staff takes on, selecting the Top 100 Wines is daunting. Not a task without benefits, though, as first there are weekly tasting panels, attended by staffers, local sommeliers and wine retailers, who start with as many as 120 wines and whittle it down to as few as 12, which are then written about for the weekly Wine section. Those weekly choices are further whittled to reach the Top 100 of the year. The 2006 list is made up solely of Chronicle three-star wines.

The more difficult project is recipe development. Lynne Char Bennett has to work backward, beginning with a chosen wine and selecting food to accompany it. It all works because of what Bennett refers to as her "palate memory" -- she has an affinity for remembering wines and is able to put them together with recipes she has constructed from scratch that will bring out their best attributes. Some wines required as many as three dishes before Bennett settled on the proper fit.